S04.E05: Double or Nothing

[rmontro]

3 hours ago, SRTouch said:

Makes sense to cook the bejesus out of the meat when you don't know why the duck was sick.

Well, if there's nothing left of the duck but ash, I hope all the organisms are dead  :)

[holly4755]

I remember on season 2 that dave  at first tried to catch fish on his sandy beach and he ws starving, but somewhere along the time line, he decided to walk out to a rocky outcropping usually covered by water and fish and crab there, the surf crashed into the rock , it turned out to be a great place for him to fish and crab.  as i said earlier, he said he gained weight the last few weighings because he was eating so well.  I am not sure that the rocky coast the boys have is the only place to fish  or is a bad place to fish. All the campers seem to have a decent amount of coast line to fish off. 

[humbleopinion]

I wouldn't mind camping with Sam and Pete.

The father/son duo are very solicitous to each other with generous with encouragement and atta boys!

Think Sam would be fun to learn from.

Would hate being a third wheel with  Brooke and Dave.

Thinking I would be sexiled and forced to sleep far away to avoid hearing adult sounds at night.

Brothers Baird would be like staying with Beavis and Butthead, with their immature antics. Enough already...

The Wilkes Brothers would bore me with stories about their kids.

Very low energy happening on their side of VI.

[holly4755]

I am over reading Bushcrafters and it is mentioned that someone checked with the game wardens on VI and the contestants had permission to kill bear - a permit required animal to hunt. 

https://bushcraftusa.com/forum/threads/alone-season-4.195432/page-13

[PaperTree]

On 7/14/2017 at 3:12 PM, patty1h said:

The killing of the duck didn't bother me, but watching it shoot out green poop made me nauseous.

With all the death on TV and in movies, that release of the bowels is never mentioned.....

I don't understand why they are not building platforms off that cold, damp ground.

The bait hanging fight was hilarious.  Everybody knows you have to hang it.

With those big tides, somebody should pile rocks into a dam across an area that's dry at low tide.  It might take awhile, but could produce easy food indefinitely .

[cooksdelight]

5 minutes ago, PaperTree said:

With all the death on TV and in movies, that release of the bowels is never mentioned...

In Mad Men, it was apparent when a guy hung himself in his office, everything was dumped on the floor. 

A little dam is a great idea! 

[PaperTree]

OK, I never watched that show, so it's very rare.  Occasionally "the stench of death" is mentioned.

I think the term I was looking for is a weir.  Doesn't block the water, just the fish.

There certainly is a surplus of rocks.  They could also pound sticks in depending on the bottom composition

[ClareWalks]

1 hour ago, PaperTree said:

With all the death on TV and in movies, that release of the bowels is never mentioned.....

They had an entire South Park episode about it, it was hilarious and disturbing (as most South Park episodes are, haha) :)

[humbleopinion]

Midnight Cowboy- Ratso Rizzo had a death dump on the bus...

[Quilt Fairy]

21 hours ago, holly4755 said:

I am over reading Bushcrafters and it is mentioned that someone checked with the game wardens on VI and the contestants had permission to kill bear - a permit required animal to hunt. 

https://bushcraftusa.com/forum/threads/alone-season-4.195432/page-13

No one on this show has ever killed any land animal larger than a mouse.  Remember no one has a gun and only a few have a bow and arrows.  The idea that they could kill a bear is beyond belief.

Edited July 17, 2017 by Quilt Fairy

[rainsmom]

6 minutes ago, Quilt Fairy said:

No one on this show has ever killed any land animal larger than a mouse.  Remember no one has a gun and only a few have a bow and arrows.  The idea that they could kill a bear is beyond belief.

It would take a pit trap or a serious deadfall. The pit trap, in particular, would take a SIGNIFICANT amount of calories to build. I can't imagine someone making the effort. (And I would find it heartbreaking if they succeeded. What if they got a sow with cubs?)

[holly4755]

I am not saying they will do it, just saying they have permission.  I believe this question came up in previous years. 

[simplyme]

Yay! I finally had a chance to watch this episode.

We didn't see much of Chris and Brody (the flatlanders), possibly because they were boring. Ye Gods. I like their senses of humor, but those few flashes of humor were about the only things that kept me conscious when they were on screen.

The other brothers, Team Baird, are still the least impressive. Aside from being unable to carry the 50+ lb packs, my 3rd grade brownie troop had more common sense and appears to have had the about the same level of bushcraft they possess. (Apparently Ted did find more stuff than we were shown if he scavenged a fishing net that Jim used to make the crab trap.)

Sam and Pete are adorable. (No disrespect for the two grown men intended.) I mean, I love their relationship. It's very warm and caring, yet they appear knowledgeable. I wouldn't mind being adopted into that family. 

Brooke and Dave continue to kick ass, imo. You can tell that yes, they've roughed it before and they're very comfortable working together. And wow, do they adore each other. I've now changed the name of Brooke's Palace to the Love Shack in my mind.

[ClareWalks]

My guess is the "permission to kill a bear" is more for self-defense practicality (a cover-your-ass policy) than any actual expectation that any of these folks could/would take down a bear for food. If they get the okay to kill bear in advance, if (a big IF) someone did kill one in self-defense (perhaps with a homemade spear or something), there'd be less legal red tape.

[simplyme]

One thing that struck me about this season is that we just finished episode six and we were on something like day 12 or 13. That's a huge difference from some other seasons, especially last season. A season that goes 89 days may be prohibitively expensive, but it also means they have a lot of footage to work with and can choose real gems to show and advance the stories they want to tell. If this season is only 30 days or so (a random guess on my part), and the contestants are grouped into twos, that significantly decreases the amount of footage they are able to use to craft a narrative. Great from a cost perspective, but it would mean less than half the video they had to choose from last season.

So season length as well as format may be influencing this if you're finding this to be a less compelling season.

I'll admit that now that the contestants are together, I'm really enjoying watching Sam and Pete and Brooke and Dave. (Jim and Ted are annoying, but I expect them to either kill each other or have one get injured soon enough.) It's not the same as watching people all alone, but it's charming in its own way, and I don't mind it for one season. For me, it's a nice break from the dreaded "I miss my family" sobbing. I mean, I get that. I would be doing that. I just find it hard to watch repeatedly from multiple people.

I'm also glad that now that the hikes are done, we're actually seeing people other than Brooke do something other than stare at water, hills, rocks, or salal. Let's just say that I'd choose Dave to be stranded with rather than either Baird brother based solely on building/whittling skill.

[Robodude]

14 hours ago, rainsmom said:

It would take a pit trap or a serious deadfall. The pit trap, in particular, would take a SIGNIFICANT amount of calories to build. I can't imagine someone making the effort. (And I would find it heartbreaking if they succeeded. What if they got a sow with cubs?)

On one of the "after Alone" shows where they interviewed 3 of the participants, I recall them saying that killing something larger than what you can eat in a day or so is useless.  There's no way to properly store the extra meat AND you have something in camp now that will drive the smell of the kill in all directions for days.

[rmontro]

42 minutes ago, Robodude said:

On one of the "after Alone" shows where they interviewed 3 of the participants, I recall them saying that killing something larger than what you can eat in a day or so is useless.  There's no way to properly store the extra meat AND you have something in camp now that will drive the smell of the kill in all directions for days.

That's a great point.  If you've ever read (or seen) Into the Wild, Chris kills a moose but the meat spoils before he can preserve it, and it was a huge regret for him.  You don't want to take a life if you can't make use of it.  

Trying to kill a bear might just as easily result in your own death, especially with the weapons they're given.  The pit idea has promise, but that could get ugly too if the bear is only wounded.

[HurricaneVal]

On 7/17/2017 at 8:45 AM, ClareWalks said:

My guess is the "permission to kill a bear" is more for self-defense practicality (a cover-your-ass policy) than any actual expectation that any of these folks could/would take down a bear for food. If they get the okay to kill bear in advance, if (a big IF) someone did kill one in self-defense (perhaps with a homemade spear or something), there'd be less legal red tape.

Yeah, this is a total CYA move by the producers, probably totally unnecessary, but I can see them wanting to make sure all liabilities were addressed.  Didn't the Season 2 Survivor -- Australian Outback production get in hot water with the Australian authorities when Colby and (yech) Jerri did something like catch fish when off on an overnight reward in the Great Barrier Reef nature preserve?  The production company got a pretty hefty fine, as I recall, and production may have been a bit negligent in informing Colby and Jerri of what they could and could not do in the nature preserve. 

I'll bet the Alone producers make sure all their contestants are informed of all the local fish and game rules.  Remember the tragedy of the red tide mussels?  A whole beach, filled with mussels, which were completely off limit to that castaway because of red tide...I still remember her expression of complete sadness when she said something on the order of "and I really like mussels..." when surveying all her forbidden bounty.

[simplyme]

19 hours ago, HurricaneVal said:

Didn't the Season 2 Survivor -- Australian Outback production get in hot water with the Australian authorities when Colby and (yech) Jerri did something like catch fish when off on an overnight reward in the Great Barrier Reef nature preserve?

Jerri was innocent in this one. :) Colby took coral back as souvenirs for the other castaways, not realizing that taking anything from the nature preserve was a big no-no with potential environmental ramifications. Coral was especially bad since it takes so long to grow and is endangered. Survivor ended up paying a fine, and Colby and Survivor powers that be ended up apologizing a lot for that one.

But yeah... In this case, I completely agree that the bear hunting licenses are CYA. Easier to get them (and better PR) than to not and have to worry if anything went wrong and someone was accused of killing or trying to kill a bear. I mean, I may not have been all that impressed with some of the contestants this year, but none of them were/are downright stupid enough (or suicidal) to want to go after a bear.